Thursday, August 21, 2008

I Turned Over My Testicles, Too

The other night I was playing a video game with my children. We were all having a lot of fun: it’s a cute little game where you have a little farm and you run around doing stuff like growing vegetables and whatnot. Well, you can also go fishing.

Since I’m all about fun, I went fishing. I spent the equivalent of twenty days in the game fishing. All my crops died. All my animals wandered off. My barn burned down. I lost everything except my shanty, which is how I understand that all farms turn out anyways.

What did I have to show for it? One fish, that I caught on my very first try. Every other attempt I caught nothing. Zilch. Squat.

So along comes Wifey, who plays a lot of video games, if you count the self-checkout aisle in the grocery store. Without that, not so much. She did play Galaga back in the day, but after that she stopped.

The phone rings, and I handed her the controls. “Here,” I said. “You can go not catch fish if you want.”

You know the rest of the story: she caught sixteen fish in ten minutes. It’s like they’re mesmerized by her tits or something and they just can’t help but jump up on the bank with her. Sure, I feel the same way, but damn! At least let me have a shred of pride here, all right?

So I came back from the phone and took the controls away from her, wrestling them out of her hands. “Now that the game has fixed itself, I’m sure I can catch fish!” I declared.

“No you can’t,” said the girl. “It’s mommy’s speciality.”

“Yeah, dad, you suck,” said the boy. “You’re too much of a dork to catch fish.”

So I took the children outside to jump on the trampoline, leaving her to angle alone. Hey, it’s not like she doesn’t make me do lots of stuff by myself, too.

We were bouncing, having a grand old time. I was watching the kids do flips and drops and stuff, and I had the worst idea ever for an out-of-shape over-thirty guy on a trampoline with his kids.

“Hey, watch this!” I said. “I’m gonna drop on my butt, then spring back up on my feet!”

“Do it!” said the girl.

“Yeah, do it!” said the boy. “Can I sleep on your side of the bed with mommy after you kill yourself?”

“Oh, ye of little faith!” I said. “Watch me!”

“Make sure you keep your hands behind you,” said the boy.

Listen, I’m not going to trust little Oedipus on anything, so I just scoffed at him. “I don’t need your help!”

I got up a good bounce, about four feet in the air, and then I pulled my legs up and prepared to triumphantly spring back onto my feet.

Only, I got twisted a little: after my butt hit the trampoline, I began to rotate backwards, and soon I was headed back towards the ground head-first. So I did what any normal person would do: I yelled a swear word and panicked.

I landed head first, wrenching my neck, and I got my feet tangled up in the net. I ended up hanging there for a few seconds as the children paddled my butt and yelled “bad daddy!” because we’re not supposed to touch the net when we bounce.